48: The Seeds of Death

Before Watching

May I give you a piece of advice? Never, ever watch a classic Doctor who story you have never watched before in the presence of those members of your family who are not fans of classic Who (which for most of us probably means all of them)

This is a little tip I worked out three or four years ago, the first time that I ever watched “The Seeds of Death”. It was being shown on one of the cable channels and I watched the first episode while it was on, and recorded the others. I started viewing episode 2 on a time I was alone in the house, but by episode 3 my wife and eldest two daughters had returned home, and that’s when the comments started. Now, it’s one thing if we’re watching a story I already know, since I can devote enough of my attention to refuting some the comments they make with such witty rejoinders as – why don’t you shut up – and – he who pays the mortgage chooses the channel – etc. , but when you’re watching a story you’ve never seen before you just can’t afford to have your attention diverted away from what’s going on on the screen.

What makes it worse is that they will inevitably draw undue attention to the shortcomings in terms of plot, acting, costume, special effects and anything else that they can find to criticise. Which has the effect of making it relatively impossible to give the story a fair hearing. Well, that was the effect it had on me, anyway. So I’m in the situation of remembering chunks of the story, but having some quite significant gaps in my memory (which I like to think of as’ shouting breaks’ ). I also have it down in my memory as something really rather disappointing, but again, this may simply be the effect of the company I had to put up with while I was watching it. I certainly hope so.

After Watching

If I hadn’t already known that this story featured the return of the Ice Warriors, then the story itself did go to some lengths to conceal the identity of the monsters du jour for the first ten minutes. The only clues are firstly, the credit at the start of the show that showed it was written by Brian Hayles, and the reptilian hissing made by the unseen alien in the first few minutes. Actually I rather like the way that we saw through the alien’s eyes when it first appeared.

The Ice Warriors. Let’s have a look at their plan. They aim to take over Earth – naturally enough. This involves using the Earth’s T-Mat system, which has its control centre on the Moon  - more about that afterwards – to transport the eponymous seeds to major population centres in the cold and temperate regions of the Earth.  When the seeds burst open they exude gas, and spores of a fungus which creates foam (a la “Fury From The Deep”) and absorbs the oxygen from the atmosphere. In a short space of time this will reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere to by 80%, which will make it unbreathable to humans, but just right for Ice Warriors, and the planet will be ripe for conquest by the Ice Warrior invasion fleet. OK? Appropriately evil behaviour, and not at all inconsistent with what we’ve already seen in “The Ice Warriors”

In “The Ice Warriors” the warriors all had similar costumes and armour. I say similar rather than identical, since one of them did have a noticeably big head in proportion to its body. That armour doesn’t seem to have been used this time, and that’s probably just as well. In the previous story the Warriors were led by Bernard Bresslaw’s Varga, but his armour was exactly the same type as the others. In this one we see the first appearance of what I’ve heard called the Ice Lord armour. This may be a bit of a misnomer, since the term is never used in this story, and I think in “The Curse of Peladon” the character in the same costume, played by the same actor (Alan Bennion) is just called a Lord. This involves wearing a larger, smoother domed metal helmet, and what looks like a fairly ordinary dark jumpsuit, gloves and boots. It does introduce the idea that the Ice Warriors may have a social structure and a hierarchy, which adds a little depth to them, and this is all to the good. It doesn’t explain why the Grand Marshal, whose head we see on a video screen, is wearing a similar helmet to the leader’s, but his has some large sequins stuck to it in places.

The basic problem with the script is a point which it actually does acknowledge for itself. The plot revolves around the fact that at this particular stage of earth History, mankind has forsaken all other means of transport in favour of the T-Mat instantaneous transportation system. I’m not saying that if a wildly improbable thing like real functioning matter transmission were ever invented that it wouldn’t rapidly become extremely popular, and supercede many other forms of transport, but it just wouldn’t see people abandoning other forms of transport completely. The coming of the Railways was widely hailed as the death knell of the canals, but although railways certainly superceded canals, the fact is that the canals are still there, and people still use them. The cnals themselves didn’t mean that people ever stopped completely using a horse and cart. The car never completely killed the bicycle. So anyway, we have the whole of the world’s economy 100% dependent upon this one form of transport. Where is the control based? That’s right – on the Moon. Pretty much the one place you have no other means of reaching if the system breaks down. Now, fair play to the script, more than one character points out the absolute stupidity of this, but none of it explains how mankind would have been stupid enough to design the system in this way in the first place.

Of course, the real reason for taking this stupid decision is that it allows us to have another ‘base under siege’ story. Yes, we’re never going to have another season like Season 5, when the vast majority of stories in the one season all adhered to this same format, but nobody seems to have told Brian Hayles that this sort of story is sooooo last year. And why not? Season 6, with 2 stories to go, has certainly been a season of variety. There were similarities between “The Dominators” and “The Krotons” but there were notable differences as well, and two very different and rather wonderful stories in between in “The Mind Robber” and “The Invasion”. By way of contrast we have here a story which seems in many ways a rerun of some of the memorable features of stories from the last two seasons. You liked “The Moonbase” because it had a moonbase under attack? No problem, this is also set on a moonbase – AND – partly set in a world weather control station, although this one is on Earth. You liked the Ice Warriors? – no problem, all present and correct. Loved the foam in “Fury from the Deep”? We got more foam in this story than you can shake a stick at.

Well, OK, the story is formulaic to an extent, but there are just a couple of interesting touches. The leader under pressure role is actually shared out between Ronald Leigh-Hunt’s Commander Radnor, and Louise Pajo’s Miss Kelly, who takes over once we get to the moon as Radnor fades more into the background. There’s an interesting twist on the traitor character here too. Fewsham, played by Terry Scully, is very quick to help the Ice Warriors, then he helps the Doctor, Zoe, Jamie and Miss Kelly escape back to Earth, but does no return himself, and starts helping the Ice Warriors again, yet then it is his deliberate actions which enables the Doctor to know the Ice Warriors’ overall plans, and to defeat them.

None of which is to say that this is a classic, because it isn’t. It is a perfectly functional and watchable story of the probably overdone base under siege story. It suffers, like all bar the very best six parters, from a little obvious padding – it seems to take an awfully long time to get the Doctor and companions to the Moon in the first place, and other than giving us one cliffhanger there is no reason whatsoever why they need to spend so much air time in the rocket. I would also say that the Ice Warriors’ plan to use the transmat is unnecessarily complicated – why not just land covertly and leave the seeds? Here’s another plot hole which is actually central to the plot. Harry Towb, a well-known face in British films and TV shows of the 60s and 70s, plays the technician Osgood. When the Ice Warriors invade the T-Mat moonbase, Towb Osgood disables the T Mat for which the Ice Warriors kill him. After which it turns out that only Osgood was skilled enough to repair it – none of the other technicians there know how to fix the T Mat. What? You have a base of personnel, and only one of them can fix the damn thing? What the hell are all the others there for? Making the tea? Generally the look of the story didn’t detract, although the men ‘s uniform is a bit strange – the bands on their legs make it look as if they are wearing their underpants outside their trousers. Oh, and the temperature control on the moonbase, which Zoe uses to kill some of the ice warriors is like a little sailing ship’s wheel – the sort of thing you get a little barometer inside. Very incongruous in these surroundings. Once the temperature gauge reached 50 celsius it shouldn’t just have been the Ice Warriors who started dying either – that would have killed the humans as well. While I’m carping, I must draw attention to the climax of the story. The seeds and foam are destroyed by water. Really? One question – what’s ice made of? And another fleet being destroyed through manipulation of a radio signal, oh please. Don’t these idiots ever learn?

“The Seeds of Death” is not alone in having some fairly obvious plot holes, and none of these are essentially fatal to the story. Going back to the last time that I watched the story, it was ruined for me by the barrage of comments from my nearest and dearest, some of which were fair, but some of which weren’t. Without that running commentary I found that I could actually start to enjoy this story for what it is – a decent Doctor who adventure story, with some quite impressive monsters, the Doctor and companions in real jeopardy at times, and some exciting action.

What Have We Learned?

The Production team were determined to get their money’s worth from the ‘Fury from the Deep’ foam machine.

The Ice Warriors do have a hierarchy – the higher you go the smoother and more spangly your costume gets. A bit like Strictly Come Dancing.